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<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <p><span class="dropcap">T</span>he belief that single motherhood is the preeminent<br />
cause<br />
of poverty in America has become a bipartisan cliché. The welfare reform<br />
enacted in 1996 was designed, among other things, to discourage single parenthood<br />
and to promote marriage. Yet a look at the experiences and policies of other<br />
nations suggests a more complex story behind the causes of and cure for poverty.<br />
Evidence from Europe shows that the remedy is to increase the economic resources<br />
available to low-income families -- through better-paying jobs that relieve<br />
poverty directly and social supports that reconcile paid employment with<br />
reliable parenting. </p>
<p>
U.S. women, men, and children experience significantly higher levels of<br />
economic hardship than their counterparts in other affluent Western nations. For<br />
example, a common cross-national measure of poverty considers households poor<br />
when their family income falls below 50 percent of their country's median<br />
income. By this measure, according to the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), in the<br />
mid-1990s more than 45 percent of U.S. single mothers were poor; by comparison,<br />
single mothers' poverty rates were 13 percent in France and around 5 percent in<br />
Sweden and Finland. Overall, U.S. women's poverty rates were 15 percent -- about 4<br />
to 5 percentage points higher than those of Canadian, Australian, and British<br />
women, 8 to 9 percentage points higher than in France or the Netherlands, and 12<br />
to 13 percentage points higher than in Sweden and Finland. </p>
<p>
Because single mothers have higher poverty rates compared with other women, a<br />
higher percentage of single motherhood, all else being equal, would raise poverty<br />
rates among women generally. Yet recent research using the LIS shows that even if<br />
U.S. women had extremely low rates of single motherhood, their poverty rates<br />
would still be higher than those of women in other affluent Western nations.<br />
Marriage, therefore, is no panacea. Rather, the high poverty rate of U.S. women<br />
is due to two main factors: the prevalence of poverty-wage jobs and the failure<br />
of the government's welfare programs to pull its citizens out of poverty. </p>
<p>
As the table on page 61 shows, compared with their Western counterparts, U.S.<br />
women and single mothers are among the most likely to earn poverty-level wages.<br />
When working full-time (at least 35 hours a week), about one-third of U.S. women<br />
and more than 40 percent of U.S. single mothers earn wages too low to free their<br />
families from poverty. In other Western nations, particularly Sweden, the<br />
Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, working full time pulls the vast majority of<br />
women (including single mothers) and their families above the poverty line.</p>
<p>
<span class="subhead">Social Transfers and Employment Supports</span></p>
<p>
But wages are only part of the story. In many countries, citizens receive<br />
generous subsidies from the government to help pay the costs of raising children<br />
and to protect workers from labor-market vicissitudes. The United States is<br />
notorious for its paltry welfare state, which is by far the least effective<br />
among industrialized democracies in reducing poverty rates. In the mid-1990s,<br />
the U.S. system of social transfers and tax credits reduced women's poverty<br />
rates by about 15 percent, while comparable welfare programs in other affluent<br />
Western nations reduced women's poverty by anywhere from 40 percent (in Canada)<br />
to 88 percent (in Sweden).</p>
<p>
Although the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is increasingly effective<br />
in reducing poverty among low-income families in this country, total<br />
social-assistance payments in the United States have decreased over time. The<br />
main social-aid program for single parents, Temporary Assistance for Needy<br />
Families (TANF), provides monthly payments that often fail to cover even the cost<br />
of rent and utilities. In 2000 the majority of states provided maximum payments<br />
between $50 and $150 per month for a family of three.</p>
<p>
<span class="dropcap">I</span>f the United States is to take seriously the task<br />
of reducing<br />
economic hardship among single-parent families, we must stop focusing on<br />
marriage and instead rethink our existing labor-market and welfare-state<br />
programs. Other affluent nations provide us with several viable alternatives.</p>
<p>
The countries most successful in reducing poverty among single mothers<br />
encourage them to pool income from a variety of sources. Examples of various<br />
"policy packages" that accomplish this include employment supports, such as<br />
child care, that provide single mothers with access to paid work; welfare<br />
benefits, such as child allowances, that all parents receive; and cash and<br />
near-cash subsidies. U.S. welfare policy gives lip service to the goal of<br />
enabling mothers to work but often fails to provide the supports to do it<br />
properly.</p>
<p>
Employment supports like subsidized child care are essential in increasing<br />
mothers' employment rates. Research by social scientists Janet Gornick, Marcia<br />
Meyers, and Katherin Ross shows that countries with more-comprehensive child-care<br />
and paid-leave programs significantly increase the employment of mothers with<br />
young children. In Sweden and France, 80 percent to 95 percent of children ages<br />
three to five are in publicly supported day care. In sharp contrast, only 14<br />
percent of U.S. children in the same age group are in publicly subsidized child<br />
care. The U.S. figure is more than 25 percentage points lower than any European<br />
nation. The lack of affordable child care is an important reason why the majority<br />
of U.S. mothers reduce their work hours after having children -- particularly<br />
while their children are young. This difficulty in sustaining full-time<br />
employment, in turn, contributes to their low income.</p>
<p>
Paid-leave policies are also important in raising single mothers' income, for<br />
two reasons: They provide a source of income for mothers caring for newborns and<br />
they keep mothers attached to the labor force. Again, the United States is a<br />
laggard. The U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act offers 12 weeks of <i>unpaid</i><br />
leave to women who work in companies with more than 50 employees. Other affluent<br />
nations provide at least 12 weeks of <i>paid</i> leave, with most granting closer<br />
to 20 weeks. Some nations, like Finland and Sweden, allow up to almost one year<br />
of paid leave, at 80 percent to 90 percent of one's former wage rate.</p>
<p>
<span class="subhead">Beyond Poverty Wages</span></p>
<p>
In addition to making employment more accessible for mothers, other affluent<br />
nations truly "make work pay." Among the stark differences between the United<br />
States and other industrialized nations (particularly Scandinavian nations) are<br />
the stronger presence of social-democratic parties and a much higher rate of<br />
unionization in the latter countries -- two factors that foster more-egalitarian<br />
wage structures than exist in the United States. (As the table indicates, the<br />
wages of single mothers employed full time in other industrialized nations more<br />
often prove sufficient to pull families out of poverty than they do in this<br />
country.) </p>
<p>
It should not be surprising, then, that Finnish and Swedish single mothers<br />
have the highest employment rates and lowest poverty rates worldwide. Yet it is<br />
not only employment that keeps their poverty rates low: Single mothers in these<br />
nations receive benefits that other parents and workers get, such as child<br />
allowances and guaranteed pensions later in life. They also receive child-support<br />
payments from the government when absent fathers cannot or do not pay them.</p>
<p>
<span class="dropcap">C</span>ontrary to the warnings of opponents, there is no<br />
evidence that<br />
such policies per se increase out-of-wedlock births. For one, single motherhood<br />
in the United States has grown in the past few decades, while social-assistance<br />
payments to single mothers declined. So it seems that social assistance alone<br />
does not increase single motherhood. In addition, European countries with the<br />
most generous social programs for single mothers (such as the Netherlands) have<br />
high rates of children growing up in families with two parents.</p>
<p>
It is important to note that in some European countries with generous<br />
welfare states, such as the Nordic countries and France, parents increasingly<br />
cohabit as singles rather than get married. While such cohabiting relationships<br />
are generally less stable than marriages, social scientists Lawrence Lu and<br />
Barbara Wolfe note that the dissolution of such unions is much less common in<br />
Europe than in the United States. So in the most generous welfare states found in<br />
Northern Europe, most children grow up with two parents -- though many form<br />
long-term cohabiting unions rather than marriages. </p>
<p>
In addition, like all their fellow citizens, mothers in the most generous<br />
European welfare states qualify for social assistance if their incomes fall<br />
below a certain level. But according to Diane Sainsbury, an expert on<br />
cross-national social policies for women, most single mothers in Sweden and<br />
Finland support themselves via employment and universal social programs, so<br />
there is little need for social-assistance programs explicitly targeted toward<br />
them. When welfare states make it easier for mothers to combine parenting and<br />
paid work, the vast majority of mothers also choose to work for pay. </p>
<p>
Many U.S. social scientists who point to marriage's benefits for children also<br />
acknowledge the importance of income and other social supports. In their book<br /><i>Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Helps, What Hurts,</i> Sara McLanahan<br />
and Irwin Garfinkel show that, on average, children of single-parent households<br />
do<br />
indeed fare worse than children of two-parent households on a host of issues,<br />
such as high-school and college dropout rates. But they add that single-parent<br />
families typically have low income, which accounts for "a substantial portion" of<br />
the differences between children of single- and two-parent families.</p>
<p>
<span class="subhead">What Can the United States Learn?</span></p>
<p>
Though the United States is not likely to adopt the employment and welfare<br />
policies that exist in other nations, we could modify our government's current<br />
social policy to substantially reduce economic disadvantage among single-mother<br />
families.</p>
<p>
First, single mothers need more access to subsidized or low-cost child care.<br />
Low-income families spend as much as 35 percent of their incomes on child<br />
care -- much more than higher-income families. In an article published in the<br /><i>Prospect</i> ["<a href="/print/V12/1/gornick-j.html">Support for Working<br />
Families</a>," January 1-15, 2001], Janet<br />
Gornick and Marcia Meyers suggest that if the United States were to spend the<br />
same share of gross domestic product on subsidized child care and paid leave as<br />
France does, we would need to increase expenditures by at most $85 billion<br />
yearly. This seems a huge outlay, but it is only about 3 percent of President<br />
George W. Bush's recently proposed $2.1 trillion budget for 2002 and far less<br />
than the annual cost of his tax cut. States could also bear part of this cost:<br />
Given the precipitous declines in welfare caseloads over the past few years, some<br />
states have redirected leftover funds to child-care programs, and many more could<br />
do so. Further, paid-leave policies are currently on the agenda in many states. </p>
<p>
The fact remains, however, that increasing employment rates of single mothers<br />
is not enough to ensure their families' escape from poverty. As President Bush<br />
emphasized in his State of the Union Address, "good jobs" are essential. But<br />
most single mothers in our country have bad jobs. According to a 2000 report by<br />
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the median income of people<br />
leaving welfare is between $8,000 and $12,000 a year. Recent research by Pamela<br />
Loprest of the Urban Institute shows that only 23 percent of those who leave<br />
welfare have health care provided by their employer. [For a comprehensive<br />
discussion of welfare reauthorization and suggestions for future policy<br />
directions, including the EITC and child-support policies, see Jared Bernstein<br />
and Mark Greenberg, "<a href="/print/V12/1/bernstein-j.html">Reforming Welfare Reform</a>," <i>TAP,</i> January 1-15, 2001.]<br />
Clearly, low-income single mothers need better jobs. </p>
<p>
Gornick's cross-national research on labor-market inequality finds that U.S.<br />
women earn low wages largely because of the U.S. wage structure's inequality. She<br />
suggests that employment policies that could help women are those that could help<br /><i>all</i> low-income workers: increases in minimum wages, higher rates of<br />
unionization and other institutional wage-setting mechanisms, and increased<br />
regulation of the international-trade policies that are pushing wages downward.<br />
While opponents claim that wage increases will lead to job losses, the Economic<br />
Policy Institute reports that neither the 1990-1991 nor the 1996-1997<br />
minimum-wage increases resulted in significant job losses. Macroeconomic factors<br />
were far more important influences on the unemployment rate. </p>
<p>
Such policies are also attractive because they are universal: All parents or<br />
all citizens could receive them. Politically, universal policies generate broad<br />
constituencies rather than leaving the poor isolated, because voters generally<br />
support policies that benefit them. However, this does not mean that we should<br />
dismantle social-assistance programs targeted toward single mothers. A recent<br />
study by the Urban Institute found that about one-third of mothers on welfare<br />
have children with chronic health or developmental problems. It will be<br />
difficult for many of these women to work outside the home, and low-income single mothers<br />
should not be impoverished while tending to caregiving responsibilities in the<br />
home. </p>
<p>
<span class="dropcap">O</span>verall, we need policy packages that make it easier for all<br />
parents to combine caregiving with employment -- or when employment is untenable,<br />
that provide economic support for caregiving. Funding these policies would, of<br />
course, require reallocating government taxing and spending, such as a rejection<br />
of the tax-cut extensions recently enacted by the Bush camp (with the support of<br />
some Democrats). But providing single mothers with policy packages that allow<br />
more of them to be employed, and at better jobs, will reduce spending on<br />
means-tested social assistance. </p>
<p>
Most important, comprehensive policy packages for single mothers could<br />
vastly reduce economic hardship among children. In the United States, growing up<br />
in a single-parent family can significantly reduce children's life chances. But<br />
experience in other industrialized nations shows that it doesn't have to be this<br />
way. To advocate marriage as the panacea for low-income families' economic<br />
problems is to avoid the real reasons why so many U.S. mothers and their children<br />
are poor: bad jobs, an inequitable wage structure, and a shoddy welfare state. If<br />
we truly want "no child left behind" in this country, we must back our political<br />
rhetoric with policy packages that address the true sources of economic<br />
disadvantage among single-parent families.</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 14 Jun 2002 17:45:37 +0000142527 at http://prospect.orgKaren Christopher